Our team lead is on a very long vacation. While he is gone, I am in charge. My first speech came during a team meeting. I let everyone know that I like to run things differently. There will be some good planning. And I will be pushing back on management and customers to ensure we don't work nights and weekends.There was silence after my speech during the meeting. However there was quite a commotion following it. One other team lead came up and hugged me. She and her team put in crazy hours. I got a bunch of phone calls too. Seems like this effort was long overdue.
The true test came this week. Our customer had a big problem. I did the research myself on it. Then I planned out how we would resolve the problem. I provided a schedule for code, test, and roll out. It immediately came under fire. I was told big customers want this thing fixed. That's when I said I would be doing the fix personally. However I needed to work a normal schedule doing it. Furthermore I wanted to set a pattern for how we would do future fixes as well. Allow enough time to get the job done right.
Today was when the decision was going to be made. A VIP from our company asked to see me in his office. He wanted to know the details of the customer problem. I had all the information and more at my fingertips. Then he asked whether we could provide the customer some work around. I spoke at length about the work around our customer would like. Then he agreed to my plan of normal work schedules and software deliveries. I hurried up and pitched the work around to our main customer sponsor. The project manager loved my ideas. I think we are just about there selling this new style of leadership.
